Last Princess of Manchuria

by Lilian Lee

  Stony-faced, she was refusing to back down.

  "You spent an entire year interrogating me, and I never broke down. I couldn't tell you what you wanted to hear. And do you know why? You were wrong about my age from the very beginning!"

  "Where is your proof? Do you have any?"

  Yoshiko thought for a moment before answering.

  "I do indeed. Send to my father, Naniwa Kawashima, in Japan for my household registration papers, and be quick about it! He can attest to the fact that I was only ten years old in 1926, when you say I was invading China. He can also tell you that I am Japanese, and not Chinese. You have treated me unfairly and unjustly, forcing me to fight for my life. But everything will be put to rights if you contact my father and he remembers what I am to him."

  She gazed levelly at the magistrate as the details of her plan crystallized in her mind.

  "You'll see, Your Honor—once those documents get here, everyone will realize the big mistake you've made, and I can go home."

  If this didn't work, she would be lost. Perhaps time was on her side, she thought. At the very least she could try to cheat the years. If Kawashima had any heart at all, he would lie for her and testify that she was Japanese—then, even the highest court in the land could not convict her. She would be free.

  Yoshiko was very calm as the guards escorted her back to her cell in Peking's Municipal Prison Number One.

  Long ago, the cell walls had been white, but over the years they had become stained with dirt and soot mixed in with old bloodstains. Each cell was thirteen feet high, with a square iron-barred window facing the central courtyard. There was a wooden plank for a bed; a bucket in the corner served as a chamber pot. The light was very dim, as dingy as the prisoners' gray uniforms.

  Some cells held as many as three dozen inmates, but Yoshiko was a problem prisoner and had a cell to herself. The previous inhabitant, a woman who had murdered her rival in love, had died in that cell.

  There was a small hole at one corner of the cell for passing food to the prisoner. The prison food consisted of watery soup and coarse corn bread, but Yoshiko devoured it hungrily.

  "When I think of how His Majesty must be suffering in Russia right now," she told herself, "how can I feel too sorry for myself?"

  She crouched down and took a bite of bread. It was cold and hard, and when she bit into it, crumbs rained down. When she was in her prime and her power was at its peak, she would never have believed that one day she would be squatting in a place like this, eating things even a dog wouldn't touch. Looking up toward the high barred window, she couldn't see the sky. Someday, she thought, someday I'll see the sky again, and leave this noisy and foul place far behind me!

  Noisy it was, indeed. Criminals of every type were there: traitors, murderesses, drug dealers, opium addicts, thieves, grave robbers. Some of these women were beautiful and some ugly, but all were tarred with same brush: They were the dregs of society. Locked up all day, they made a raucous din, wailing and shouting from dawn till dusk, singing, dancing, weeping. It was filthy and it stank, and nobody was given anything with which to wash herself, much less a change of clothes.

  Still, Yoshiko thought she was different from the others. They were common, petty criminals, who had never seen the world. None of them had really lived, not the way she had—they were just a bunch of sewer rats, scuttling off into the shadows, hatching their dirty little schemes. They were beneath her notice, the way they squabbled over trifles, sometimes raising a ruckus that lasted all day. Something as worthless as tooth powder was enough to cause a scuffle. Even in prison, Yoshiko still had her dignity, and she was constantly shouting at the others to stop.

  "What's all that racket about? You're all so small-minded!"

  She swore to herself that if she ever got out of here, she would never come back. She would rather die.

  A sentimental love song was playing on someone's radio, and all the inmates fell silent.

  "When will my love return?" the singer half cried, like the melancholy ghost of an abandoned woman. Yoshiko drowsily closed her eyes, listening as the song played on, a drug that calmed the prisoners, until bit by bit it grew silent all around. There were only two roads left open to this "Venus in a Suit"—to die in obscurity, or to live on in obscurity.

  "Miss Yoshiko!"

  Someone was calling to her. She opened her eyes and saw that it was her lawyer. Her heart leapt.

  "Mr. Li!"

  He had a sheaf of documents with him—the gift she had been awaiting for so long was at last here! Barely able to contain herself, she took a deep breath before opening the file. She quickly skimmed through it, her eyes racing over the lines; but when she reached the end, she went straight back to the beginning and read it more slowly:

  "Yoshiko Kawashima is an alias of the Chinese woman known as Chin Pi-hui. She is the fourteenth daughter of Shan-chi, Prince Su. I personally had no children of my own, and I adopted Yoshiko when she was six years old at the behest of her family. This took place on October 25, 1913."

  Yoshiko's face fell, but she read on.

  "Since childhood, most Japanese people have taken her to be a Japanese citizen."

  She couldn't believe it. She read it again, clutching the paper tightly as a cold sweat crept over her body. Was this it? Was this the proof of identity she had anxiously awaited day and night? He hadn't even changed her birth year to 1916, nor had he tried to explain that she was really Japanese. It was outrageous! This wasn't what she had asked for at all.

  She looked up at Mr. Li with panic-stricken eyes, completely at a loss.

  "He didn't do what I asked," she said in a daze. "I didn't want him to tell the truth. I wanted him to lie—to save my life!"

  Li was sympathetic but could do nothing to help her.

  "In the past, Mr. Kawashima had dealings with the Black Dragon Society, and he is still under surveillance. One slip, and the United Nations will prosecute him as a war criminal. He didn't dare perjure himself, least of all in writing! I'm afraid that his testimony has only worsened your position."

  "But he's over eighty. . . ." she said dully.

  "If there were anything I could do, I would do it, Miss Yoshiko."

  Her face went ashen as she slumped into a dejected heap. He was her last hope—and now that hope had been destroyed. It was like falling into a glacial crevasse. She clutched the letter with stiff and icy hands. Was there any way out now? She didn't want to die. He was her first, she reflected, moaning in disbelief.

  "It's funny," she said hoarsely. "That man spent his entire life telling lies—what made him decide to start telling the truth all of a sudden? I don't understand it."

  She seemed to wilt. Her arms drooped limply at her sides as the papers slipped through her fingers, like her ebbing life.

  At eleven-fifteen on the morning of October 22, 1947, the magistrate read Yoshiko's sentence:

  "You, Chin Pi-hui, known also by the Japanese alias of Yoshiko Kawashima, having been found guilty of committing the crimes of treason and espionage, are to be stripped of your civil rights as well as all of your personal property for the rest of your natural life. This court further sentences you to death."

  His voice was flat and unemotional, and she listened, dull-eyed. The crowd whooped with joy as a silent Yoshiko was escorted back to the prison, her frail figure disappearing into its depths. The blocks of cells seemed to stretch on forever—she knew there was no escape. The sounds of clapping and shouting grew fainter and fainter, stopping abruptly as the prison doors slammed behind her.

  Memories of Peking in the springtime came flooding back to her. It was a time when pale green foliage adorned the city walls, and an array of blossoms—lilac, forsythia, apricot, cherry, peach—held the old capital in a fragrant embrace, while the crimson pillars and marble steps of the Forbidden City were bathed in the golden light of sunset. How beautiful Peking was, at any time of day, in any season. Yoshiko wondered if she would live to see another spring. Would she even see t
he new year? It was unimaginable, but she might not see another springtime. Like a butterfly who has lost its wings, she had not only lost the ability to fly, she had lost her beauty as well.

  Locked up in prison, she grew thin and hollow-eyed, and one of her front teeth fell out. Lack of sunlight left her skin papery white, and she grew so emaciated she seemed lost in her baggy gray uniform. Fate was battering her, persistently and intensely, like storm waves battering the shore, until she became so worn down she no longer cared.

  One day, she saw something that briefly shook her out of her apathy. She thought she saw a prisoner who resembled Shun-kichi Uno being led into the prison. Could that criminal shuffling along with a bowed head really be him? Maybe there was some justice in the world after all.

  She lifted up her bowl of coarse noodle soup and slurped noisily, down to the very last drop of broth. When there was nothing left, she let out a great belch. Now that her belly was full, she turned her attention to satisfying another pressing need and gave herself a shot of morphine. Letting her head loll back, she sighed contentedly, enveloped in a warm and peaceful haze. Leaning against the wall, she looked like nothing so much as a heap of dirty rags. She had given up; and yet, in giving up, she seemed to find some solace.

  The other women inmates were filled with pity when they learned of Yoshiko's death sentence, and many of them wept for her; despite their violent natures, these women were not without humanity. True, many had murdered their husbands or committed crimes even more shocking, but they shared something in common with Yoshiko—she, like them, was only in prison because of men! She would have been the first to admit it, too; anyone passing by her cell during the day might have heard her muttering to herself, "I despise men!"

  When she saw the others crying for her, she pretended not to know why.

  She needed a postage stamp and pulled a wad of bills from her purse, handing them over to the warden.

  "Twenty-five thousand yuan?" she asked.

  "No, thirty thousand."

  She didn't have much choice and paid up. Paper was expensive, too—everything in prison was expensive, for that matter— and she bent her head over her letter, writing in tiny, cramped characters, trying to fit as much as she could onto one scrap of paper. She was writing to a man—a man she finally forgave.

  To my respected Father, it began. Happy New Year!

  She called him "Father" still. She had only known her natural father until the age of seven and had only the haziest impressions of him. It was the foster father who raised her who actually changed her life. But maybe it wasn't so one-sided— didn't she also change the lives of many men?

  What was the point of thinking about it? She was reaching the end of the line. She wrote on:

  I haven't got much time left. I feel like the withered flowers and dead leaves left behind by the autumn wind—at least I once knew the glory of springtime. I had my day, and as long as one can say one did something useful in life, then one needn't have any regrets.

  In many ways, prison is a kind of paradise, a safe place where nobody has to work, but everybody has food to eat. It's not such a bad life, really!

  I do have a few complaints, however. I've heard that the papers are suggesting I be turned into some kind of tent-show attraction, with the proceeds from ticket sales being donated to charity. Speculators have adapted my story to musicals, without so much as asking my permission. It's incredibly disrespectful!

  Of course, there is something ennobling about impending death. One becomes quite magnanimous and ceases to be troubled by little things like these. One no longer cares. I know that I am going to die and that there's nothing I can do about it. So I might as well tell the world that I don't have any more secrets to tell, least of all about others. Nothing can save me now, so I might as well assume the guilt for everybody else's crimes, too, and save them the misery. Why should I add to the world's suffering?

  Nobody visits me or brings me gifts. The people I used to know here in prison have all turned their backs on me; but it doesn't matter anymore. Close friendships are too risky, anyway.

  When life becomes truly terrible, there's nothing one can do except try to look after one's self and learn to laugh.

  It's New Year's and I'm yearning for azuhi- filled rice cakes.

  I often dream of my monkey. I remember the way he used to sit on the windowsill with his head cocked to one side, watching the trams go by. He looked so cute. I really loved him, more than anyone will ever know. I wish he hadn't died. When I'm dead, I don't want to be buried with other people, I want to be buried beside my little Ah-fu.

  I never imagined I would be going before you.

  Take good care of yourself!

  Yoshiko

  There was still some blank space left on the paper, and she filled it with a cartoonish sketch of Ah-fu. She sealed the letter in an envelope and wrote the name of the recipient on the outside: Mr. Naniwa Kawashima.

  She was beyond love or hate now and was letting everything go.

  Later, the warden came shouting for her.

  "There's someone here from the State Auditor's Council, and he wants to see you!"

  Barely able to rouse herself, she protested listlessly, "They've already cleaned me out! Everything's been accounted for!"

  But she dragged herself up, rubbed at the dirt around her eyes with the back of her hand, and hacked a foul cough. They had taken everything from her that they possibly could—her wealth, her future. What did they want from her now? Unwilling even to look up at her visitor, she heard him addressing her in official jargon:

  "Our auditors came across a confiscated necklace. It's in the shape of a phoenix and is set with about a thousand diamonds of varying shapes and sizes. We weren't sure whether it was yours or not. We need your confirmation either way."

  His voice was familiar. But so cold, so lacking in feeling. She jerked her head up to look at him, and her slack nerves snapped to attention. She was speechless. This unexpected guest, this official functionary in a tailored suit, was Yun Kai!

  22

  Not once, in all the intervening years, did she even dream she would meet Yun Kai again, least of all in such embarrassing circumstances.

  "I'll be in the visiting room," he said with no trace of emotion.

  He left her completely flustered. She felt so inferior, so old and ugly. She had lost her self-respect a long time ago—how could she face him? Her hands fluttered helplessly as she paced back and forth. What was she going to do?

  Hastily running a comb through her hair, she found it stiff with dirt, so she rubbed in a little bit of peanut oil. There were no mirrors in prison, but she had fashioned a makeshift one out of a shard of broken glass and a piece of black paper. Scanning around the room, she seized on some tooth powder, which she used as a substitute for face powder, rubbing it onto her face until her skin was white. She found a piece of red paper on an old candy box and rubbed that against her lips in place of lipstick, blending the color with saliva. A glance in her makeshift mirror didn't give her much comfort, but what more could she do?

  At length she decided she was ready to go to the visiting room. Taking a long, deep breath, she sought to compose herself.

  The warden brought her, straight-backed and resolute, before Yun Kai. She was putting on an air of confidence so that he would not see how old and broken down she was, but the effort only made her feel worse.

  Yun Kai looked uncomfortable. Struggling to hold herself erect, Yoshiko sat down opposite him. She spoke first, in a husky voice that surprised even herself.

  "Would you mind telling me what you're doing here?"

  Yun Kai picked up the necklace and meaningfully laid it on the table between them. Although it sparkled and danced with inner fires, that phoenix still could not fly.

  "We hoped you could identify this for us and tell us whether or not it's yours. Once we've verified its origins, we can record it as confiscated property and dispose of it."

  Yoshiko gave a ruef
ul chuckle.

  "Since it's been confiscated already, I can hardly claim that it belongs to me anymore, now can I?"

  She folded her arms across her chest in an attempt to conceal her discomfort and her wildly pounding heart. He leaned toward her, and she looked at him in disbelief. What was he up to? A welter of suspicions crowded her mind.

  "Are you absolutely positive?" he said, bending closer still.

  Then, with a swift and nervous glance around him, he whispered in Yoshiko's ear.